Road to Beijing

By Evan Smith

Evan Smith, Soloist

With less than two weeks from our depar­ture for Bei­jing, the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton Wind Ensem­ble has been work­ing dili­gently to put  the fin­ish­ing touches on 17 pieces of music in prepa­ra­tion for our con­certs abroad.  In addi­tion to an exten­sive array of full-band lit­er­a­ture, var­i­ous mem­bers of the ensem­ble met this past week­end to again rehearse a num­ber of cham­ber music pieces that will be per­formed on a con­cert at Ren­min Uni­ver­sity. Cov­er­ing almost every sec­tion of the ensem­ble, high­lights will include Igor Stravinsky’s Octet, Brett Dietz’s Sharp­ened Stick for per­cus­sion ensem­ble, as well as selec­tions for brass and wind quintets.

Of course, prepar­ing to move 50+ musi­cians across the ocean requires more plan­ning than music rehearsals alone; and, many of the grad­u­ate stu­dents have been hard at work coor­di­nat­ing travel prepa­ra­tions behind the scenes.  Indeed, last month, the entire ensem­ble coor­di­nated appli­ca­tions and sent away their pass­ports for the appro­pri­ate travel visas, which arrived en masse back on cam­pus yesterday.

Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton Wind Ensemble

More­over, as we get closer to our depar­ture, I have been assist­ing with the task of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the air­line about trans­port­ing our larger musi­cal instru­ments and equip­ment.  While flutes and clar­inets can eas­ily be car­ried on board, some mem­bers of the ensem­ble are respon­si­ble for play­ing mul­ti­ple instru­ments on the tour reper­toire.  Among oth­ers, the band will also be car­ry­ing three tubas, a contra-alto clar­inet, a con­tra­bas­soon, two cases of per­cus­sion, two cym­bal cases, and a bari­tone sax­o­phone.  While every­one has sub­mit­ted infor­ma­tion on their instru­ments, those whose instru­ments will need to be checked sep­a­rately also had to weigh their cases on my very own bath­room scale from home.

Well, it could be worse…

Over­all, our added bag­gage of instru­ments (as well as music copies and doc­u­ments) should weigh about another 600 pounds!  Luck­ily, we are able to bor­row our three double-basses and mal­let per­cus­sion instru­ments upon our arrival in Beijing.

As I write this, we are just a few hours away from our send-off con­cert in Meany Hall on the UW cam­pus.  We are excited to meet some of our hosts and dis­play the hard work that the ensem­ble has been putting in over the school year.  After tonight’s con­cert, there will be only one final rehearsal before the ensem­ble meets at the air­port for our jour­ney together!

A ver­sa­tile sax­o­phon­ist, Evan Smith holds degrees in sax­o­phone per­for­mance from the Uni­ver­sity of North­ern Iowa and James Madi­son Uni­ver­sity. Cur­rently a DMA stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton, Evan per­forms over a wide styl­is­tic spec­trum, appear­ing in both clas­si­cal and jazz set­tings on a vari­ety of wood­winds. A pro­po­nent of new music, Evan is a mem­ber of noted Seat­tle ensem­ble The Box Is Empty and has com­mis­sioned a num­ber of works for sax­o­phone, recently debut­ing two new pieces for alto sax­o­phone at the World Sax­o­phone Con­gress in St. Andrews, Scot­land. In addi­tion to his per­form­ing, Evan is an expe­ri­enced edu­ca­tor, main­tain­ing an active stu­dio. Before mov­ing to Seat­tle, he also spent a semes­ter teach­ing music in Cara­cas, Venezuela, and taught sax­o­phone, impro­vi­sa­tion, and jazz his­tory over three sum­mers for the Cel­e­bra­tion Iowa Jazz Band at Luther Col­lege in Dec­o­rah, Iowa.

The Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton Wind Ensem­ble will be per­form­ing to a sold out crowd of 1,700 in Bei­jing, China this month, a feat almost unheard of in the United States. The pop­u­lar­ity of West­ern Clas­si­cal music in China is very much at a peak, as is noted by the numer­ous orches­tras, wind ensem­bles, and tour­ing cham­ber groups draw­ing large crowds to their per­for­mances in China. The grow­ing num­ber of west­ern clas­si­cal instru­ment fac­to­ries in China is also indica­tive of the country’s high demands for the pro­duc­tion and per­for­mance of the music.

The his­tory of Western-style orches­tras in China dates back only to the 19^th cen­tury when tra­di­tional Chi­nese ensem­bles began to inte­grate West­ern instru­ments into their prac­tices. The estab­lish­ment of the Shang­hai Con­ser­va­tory in 1927 played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the pop­u­lar­iz­ing of West­ern art music tra­di­tions in China and con­tin­ues to pro­duce musi­cians of the high­est order.

The inter­est in clas­si­cal music in China has, in recent years, helped to ener­gize orches­tras in the US that con­tinue to face dimin­ish­ing audi­ences. In 2012, the New York Phil­har­monic forged a four-year part­ner­ship with the Shang­hai Sym­phony Orches­tra. Also in 2012, the Philadel­phia Orches­tra — the first U.S. group to visit China, in 1973 — held classes and con­certs around the coun­try, plan­ning a return in 2013. The Chicago Sym­phony Orches­tra also recently com­pleted its own tour of Bei­jing, Shang­hai and Hong Kong.

The UW Wind Ensemble’s visit to China will func­tion as another impor­tant musi­cal part­ner­ship between the US and China and will also pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant career oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents at the university.

Please DONATE to sup­port our stu­dents and oppor­tu­ni­ties such as this tour, which through musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions and exchange of schol­ars, will pro­mote cul­tural shar­ing between the United States and China.